Versindaba
~ 'n Kollektiewe weblog vir die Afrikaanse digkuns ~

 

Dis herfs hier aan die Franse kant. Grys kraanvoëls het reeds ‘n ruk gelede skadu’s oor die plataanboom toppe getrek. Amber strepe wat suidwaarts mik. Ek kyk op na die voëls se raserige skemer vlug en iets draai in my binneste.  ‘n Draaiorrel -emosie. Blouerigheid wat oor my poeier  – ‘n soort herfs-melankolie. Joan Didion vertel van ‘n soortgelyke emosie in haar nuutste publikasie – Blue Nights. (Harper Collins-Fourth Estate.2011)

 

 ”In certain latitudes there comes a span of time approaching and following the summer solstice, some weeks in all, when the twilights turn long and blue……you find yourself swimming in the colour blue, and over the course of an hour or so this blue deepens, becomes more intense even as it darkens and fades, approximates finally the blue of the glass on a clear day at Chartres…”

Hier noem die mense dit l’heure bleue. Die Engelse noem dit ” the gloaming. “

Didion skryf verder… “The very word ‘gloaming’ reverberates, echoes- the gloaming, the glimmer, the glitter, the glisten, the glamour- carrying in its consonants, the images of houses shuttering, garden darkening, grass-lined rivers slipping through the shadows. During the blue nights you think the end of day will never come. As the blue nights draw to a close (and they will, and they do) you experience an actual chill, an apprehension of illness, at the moment you first notice: the blue light is going, the days are already shortening, the summer is gone.”

 

Carolyn Forché het haar vinger op ‘n blou pols.  Uit haar bundel  Blue Hour  ‘n vers:

 

 Blue Hour

for Sean Christophe

 

The moon slips from its cerement, and my son already disappearing into

       a man, moves towards his bed for the night, wrapped in a towel of

       lake scent.

 

 

A viola, night voiced, calls into its past but nothing comes.

 

A woman alone rows across the lake. Her life is intact, but what she

       thought could never be taken has been taken. An iron bridge railing

       one moment its shadow the next.

 

It is n’y voir que du bleu it is blind to something. Nevertheless.

 

Even the most broken life can be restored to its moments…

 

****

 

Viooltjies in die voorhuis,
        Viooltjies blou en rooi!
Viooltjies orals op die veld,
        En orals, ai, so mooi!

Saam met die eerste wilde sampioene en die swawels se daaglikse telefoondraad vergaderings open die jagseisoen in Frankryk. Oorgewig omies met koddige hoedjies stap in gelid, elkeen met ‘n geknakte dubbelloop oor die arm. Daar’s dikwels ‘n jong Rambo ook in die groep. Sy wilde oë skeur deur struik en bos – soek na die glim van die fisant se skitterende nekvere. Jy is of ‘n jagter of nie. Hulle sê hier in die Creuse dat jy met moord kan wegkom. Letterlik. Met ‘n goed beplande jagongeluk en sampioen vergiftiging gaan jy beslis ‘n goedgesinde regter raakloop – miskien jag jy al jare met hom saam…

 

Crow Goes Hunting

Ted Hughes. Crow. Faber Paperbacks. 1974

Crow
Decided to try words. 

He imagined some words for the job, a lovely pack-
Clear-eyed, resounding, well-trained, 
With strong teeth. 
You could not find a better bred lot. 

He pointed out the hare and away went the words
Resounding. 
Crow was Crow without fail, but what is a hare? 

It converted itself to a concrete bunker. 
The words circled protesting, resounding. 

Crow turned the words into bombs-they blasted the bunker. 
The bits of bunker flew up-a flock of starlings. 

Crow turned the words into shotguns, they shot down the starlings. 
The falling starlings turned to a cloudburst. 

Crow turned the words into a reservoir, collecting the water. 
The water turned into an earthquake, swallowing the reservoir. 

The earthquake turned into a hare and leaped for the hill
Having eaten Crow’s words. 

Crow gazed after the bounding hare
Speechless with admiration

 

***

 

                   In my ateljee sien ek deur die dakvensters hoe die wilde kastaiingbome bleek word om die kiewe, die blare vol geelsug afgooi – hoe gepoetste donkerbruin sade onverwags  uit die bloute na benede stort. Teen die glas van die venster maak dit ‘n geweldige knal. ‘n Koeëlklap uit die boomtoppe. Mauser, Martini-Henry en Drie-nul-drie. Ek staan en skilder in die spervuur.

Die Jagter se Dogter is ‘n tema wat  elke nou en dan deur my werk loop. Soos ‘n stillewe of portret word dit iets wat ek met oorgawe aanpak-gegewe die tyd wat reg en ryp is. Dus nou weer sulke tyd. Gepas ook dat dit juis jagseisoen is. Die voorsketse begin lyf kry en die groter werke se komposisies word beplan in dowwe krytlyne. 

Dit is die maand Oktober,
                       die mooiste, mooiste maand:
Dan is die dag so helder,
              so groen is elke aand,
So blou en sonderwolke
                       die hemel heerlik bo,
So blomtuin-vol van kleure
                       die asvaal ou Karoo.

 

                   Vir die anderhalfjaar het ek twee modules by Oxford University se Continuing Education Department gedoen. Dis deel van die Creative Writing Course. Elkeen van die modules duur tien weke en krediete word toegeken nadat jy jou finale werkstuk ingehandig het. Ek het én moes my alie afwerk.  Ek is trots om te pronk dat ek vir beide modules die volle tien krediete toegeken is. Vir die poësie-module was ons tutor Kathryn Simmonds, ‘n jong digter wat met haar debuut-bundel ‘n paar gawe Internasionale pryse losgeslaan het.

( Sunday at the Skin Launderette. Seren. Poetry Wales Press Ltd. 2008)

 

On the Day that You were Born

 

The angels got together and decided to create

a dream come true.

Sorry, no, that wasn’t you.

On the day that you were born

it rained incessantly.

Three potholers were carried to their deaths

by flashflood in North wales.

In Manchester a man came home

and set about his wife

with woodwork tools.

Everywhere the sky was dark by four o’clock.

There might have been an air disaster too -

in fact there was,

two hundred people dropped into a field.

No one survived

 

***

Wat gee ek om die winter?
                       Wat praat jy nou van Mei?
Wat skeel dit, as ons later
                       weer donker dae kry?
Ek is nou in Oktober,
                       die mooiste, mooiste maand,
Met elke dag so helder,
                       so pragtig elke aand!

 

Tydens die kursus het ek met die werk van talle digters kennis gemaak.Veral met van die jonger geslag woordwoekers.  Ek plaas ‘n paar verse van digters en gedigte wat my aandag getrek het :

 

The Wind

after Antonio Machado

 

The wind pulled up and spoke to me one day.

The jasmine on his breath took mine away.

 

‘ This perfume can be yours too, if you want:

just let me carry off your roses’ scent.’

 

‘My roses? But I have none left,’ I said.

‘The flowers in my garden are all dead.’

 

He sighed. ‘ Give me the fallen petals then.

The leaves that rattle in the empty fountain.’

 

With that he left me. And I fell to weeping

for the garden that they gave into my keeping.

 

Don Patterson. Rain.Faber&Faber.2009

 

 

 

Big Fish

 

It’s like returning to a natal pool

after years of doing business in great waters,

and only a few will make it whole,

the dreams of youth unsullied and intact

after all they’ve seen in the world’s working mirrors,

its splendid distractions, the weight of its cold hard facts,

 

and the driver lets you off at the foot of the hill

and you pass. the substation humming its old song

about power being stepped down, the climbing frame

in the swing-park posing its puzzle, and before long

your birth street greets you with aan ambush of smells:

teatimes in doorways where no-one remembers your name.

 

Paul Farley. The Dark Film. Picador Poetry. 2012

 

In the Evening

 

The heads of roses begin to droop.

The bee who has been hauling his gold

all day finds a hexagon in which to rest.

 

In the sky, traces of clouds,

the last few darting birds,

watercolors on the horizon.

 

The white cat sits facing a wall.

The horse in the field is asleep on its feet.

 

I light a candle on the wooden table.

I take another sip of wine.

I pick up an onion and a knife.

 

And the past and the future?

Nothing but an only child with two different masks.

 

Billy Collins. The Trouble With Poetry. Random House. 2005

 

 

Galway Moons

for michael lally

 

Where there are fields by the lake

crazy men own them and won’t let

anyone buy in. If you want to partake

of Loughrea’s old stone upon a stone, get

rich quick. There are no more deals.

 

If you can recall the street where you were born

pack the memory carefully in the fat suitcase

and take it home. Leave all scorn

right here or it will show up on your face

in Kinsella’s tonight amid jigs and reels.

 

There is a hole in the ground with a poet in it

everytime you turn around. The dance crowd

is waiting for you downstairs. Just a minute,

you tell them. The dearly dearly departed are a cloud

over me, and I am lost in the house the cloud conceals.

 

Terence Winch. Falling out of bed in a room with no floor. Hanging Loose Press.2011

 

 

That Sweet Before Emotion

 

This is yesterday’s tomorrow when middle-aged men

slide into hot tubs to ease the slump

of their feckless muscles.Happy again

to real in an old warmth, and relive short forays of adventure.

Once more they have fathers to tell their days to:

the Navaho raid, the Viking sea-battle,

Batman plunged into the deep night

to pluck jailbirds back to jail.

Or mothers: the scent of rosewater that lingers

in pools above a crisply made-up bed

and settles on a forehead

before she pulls the veil across the night.

They remember it all, sorry for everything.

 

John Stammers. Interior Night. Picador Poetry.2010

 

                          ‘What utters winters’

What utters winter, brings spring, lays the summer’s days

and shortens resolutely autumn’s afternoons;

 

what places in this air these birds, or in these birds

the will to wander in this air; what gives light light,

 

makes wind come, causes leaves to fall, or trees to rise

or lakes to swell or to the sun affords this sense

 

of issuing these fields and ponds and sands and woods

makes, where it makes a thing, the thing part-incomplete,

 

allowing for how anything must on its own

include some need, the way the thing which shapes the heart

 

figures it less than whole, or figures it so made

that constantly it wants this hard, redemptive hurt

 

which only some glimpsed, ingredient heart can provide

and which, perhaps, birds find issuing from the sun.

 

Matthew Welton. The Book of Matthew.Carcanet  Press. 2003

 

 

in her kitchen

 

delphinium

the heart, fleet, in its large domain

a grand meaulnes

summer, recalled, a light blue lent sea

of dust and shadow, now, the house

of doubtfulness

who, in the hospital, implored them-

deep in daylight, implicate, a crowd

hours pass, unrecalled

the heart, a stripped tent in a field.

 

Gillian Allnutt. Poetry Review.Fall-2007

 

Ek plak een van my eie verse aan wat ek as deel van my finale portefeulje vir die module by Oxford ingehandig het.

 

Iridaceae

 

Six times inflorescent fans

summon up the inky sap

naughty nectar dribbles

from a mossy perianth

The scurrilous secretion

makes you come

from Arcadia

to my bartered barren bed

Three falls. Three petals

tent the hidden treasure:

sweet candy

white amber

                  From the Styx she draws a beaker river water

with this she puts to sleep those who forswore a daughter

 

 © Louis Jansen van Vuuren

 

 Vroeër  praat ek van herfsblare en die naderende winter.  Ek noem dat emosies blouerig kan draai – gevoelens uitspin soos wat ‘n draai-orreltjie met musieknote maak. Verlede week is die bome in Parys reeds in demi-deuil. Dis heerlik hoe die herfsson  mense buite toe lok in die laaste warmte voordat die winter weer kom. Dis ‘n dag van klanke, herfsblare en ‘n blou onthou:

        Pikante harpklankies trek my aandag so in die soek na ‘n skadukol in die Jardin du Palais-Royal. Onder die lindelaan by die fontein, kry ek gewoonlik rusplek in een van Parys se mooiste verskuilde tuine. Maar vandag steek ek vas in die koel arkade op soek na die oorsprong van die verleidelike musiek. Daar kry ek dit ook.

       Die onmiskenbare melodie van La Vie en Rose kom uit ‘n winkeltjie so groot soos ‘n ouderwetse musiekdosie. Hier word slegs opwen-melodieë in kissies verkoop. Kleintjies en grotes. Piepklein kartondosies met ‘n draad slingertjie wat al die bekende liedjies uit blaker, soos Frère Jacques en Claire de Lune. Selfs Amerikaanse ditties soos Love Story is te vinde. Daar’s ook kosbare antieke kissies met bleek perlemoer rose en ‘n draai-drommetjie wat arias uit La Traviata vrylaat.

       Anna Joliet is die eienares wat al vir ‘n leeftyd haar winkeltjie hier bedryf. Sy vertel dat die skrywer Colette, in haar later jare, dikwels na volksdeuntjies wou luister. Dit voer haar terug na sorglose kinderdae waar sy vir ure Schubert-deuntjies op die klavier  kon speel. Later het sy met Jean Cocteau  verbygekom. Hy wou graag Gigi se temaliedjie hoor. La Callas  wat dikwels middagetes by die Grand Vefour langsaan geniet het, het glo eendag met ‘n triste  gesig kom vra vir ‘n kissie wat ietsie uit Zorba the Greek kon speel.

         Gister doen  Madame Joliet iets onverhoeds . Sy gee vir my ‘n  klein musiek-masjientjie as kadotjie saam. By die fontein haal ek my geskenkie uit die papiersakkie waarop daar in sierskrif geskryf  staan: Le Chêne -Franz Schubert. Ek begin draai. Die jare val soos trane  weg.  Onder ‘n dak van blare in ‘n vêr land sing die kartonboksie  vir my ‘n deuntjie uit my kinderjare- daar buite langs die woonhuis, daar staan ‘n eikeboom…

 

(Geskryf vir My Tyd Bylaag. Rapport)

 

Van die maestro se hand ‘n toemaakvers.

 

oopskryf

 

hoe om jouself toe te maak

met woorde

as beskerming teen die woordlose

koue gekerm van die ewigheid

 

Clifton: Februarie-Mei 2010

(Breyten Breytenbach. die beginsel van stof. Human & Rousseau. 2011)

 

Viooltjies in die voorhuis,
        Viooltjies blou en rooi!
Viooltjies orals op die veld,
        En orals, ai, so mooi

 

(C. Louis Leipoldt. Oktobermaand. Groot Verseboek. Tafelberg 2008)